


This is the Beat of my Heart

by QuickLikeLight



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Blood Magic, Derek-centric, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, POV Derek Hale, Pack Bonding, Pack Piles, Reincarnation, Sterek if you squint, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 21:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4408028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickLikeLight/pseuds/QuickLikeLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Did it -?” his voice is a harsh croak, but he has to know, needs to be sure before he can claw his way back out of the liminal space. If they aren’t here, he doesn’t want to escape.</p>
<p>“It worked,” she says, and her voice is like music in his ears, soft and husky and perfect even though it’s weak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the Beat of my Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kuronoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuronoir/gifts).



> Mike asked me for Derek/Happiness, pack feels, and Derek-centric fluff. This is what happened. 
> 
> Mild warnings for: non-graphic mentions of blood, Derek's internal monologue being Not Great, dubious use of Banshee/Phoenix magic to bring people back from the dead. Ultimately this is just a nice little thing to celebrate Derek and his place in the Beacon Hills pack. 
> 
> To find out more about commissioning me, click [here](http://quicklikelight.tumblr.com/post/124022526981/ive-had-a-couple-of-people-e-mail-me-wanting-to).

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

It’s a valid enough question, he guesses. Derek stares at his hands as the rest of the pack circles idly, waiting for the moon to be at its peak. Scott looks painfully earnest, the way he always does when he’s offering Derek a way out.

“You don’t have to. It - uh. Well. You remember.”

And he does. He remembers the way Scott’s body crumpled, the way the light left his eyes for a moment as Allison’s opened again. Derek remembers how heavy his body felt in Derek’s arms as he fought the pull of the spell, gave her his blood and breath. He remembers what it was like to watch Scott pay for a death with life of his own, and he knows this will be worse.

Because Scott had one life to pay for, and Derek has three.

“I have to try,” he says, trying to keep the gruffness out of his voice and failing miserably. Anxiety claws hungrily at his chest as the moon rises, burns its way across a velvet sky. He’s never been one for poetry, but it seems like a night to start with the way the fog rolls in between the trees, how moonlight scatters in Lydia’s red hair, how the soft sounds of Braeden loading the chamber echo like ghosts of a past he doesn’t want.

At the banshee’s nod, the circle forms around the tree stump. Scott’s hand doesn’t shake this time as they grip one another, but Stiles’ is cold as ice and his heartbeat hammers like a hummingbird’s.

It’s oddly comforting, Stiles’ fear, not of him but _for_ him. If this is for nothing, at least he’ll have had that.

“Are you ready?” Parrish sits cross-legged on the stump with items Derek brought from the loft: a hair tie Erica used when she slept in the train car, a set of red braids from Boyd’s JROTC uniform, a soft sweater Laura had left in her car that he’s kept with him all these years, wishing he could smell her on it still.

“Perimeter?” Scott asks, voice soft in the dark.

“Clear here,” Braeden reports, at the same time Argent and his daughter both nod their agreement from their positions. The others link hands - Cora, Kira, Malia, Liam, Mason, Isaac, Jackson, Danny, one by one forming the chain that will keep the power contained, keep them all standing as Lydia and Parrish draw life back from the darkness.

“Derek, you don’t -” Stiles starts, voice shaking, but Derek squeezes his hand and shuts him up.

He does have to, even if no one wants to tell him so.

The slash of Lydia’s knife burns like fire in his veins, the same fire that licks from Parrish’s fingers, sets alight the tokens he brought to call them back from their cold places, their separate darknesses. Silver and gold sparks in front of his eyes as Lydia calls to them in a whisper, so much worse than her scream. Her voice echoes too loud in his head, and he can feel his life running weakly from his mouth, his nose, his fingertips. It searches them out, crying for them.

_Come home_ , he thinks, when he’s able to think around the hot throb of magic in his head. _Come back to us. Let’s start over. Come home to me._

The mist rushes in front of his eyes, blurring lines of precious metal and wolfsbane blue that stretch from him to the tree, binding them together. In his mind’s eye he can see them, see Erica tossing her hair as she saunters close, see Boyd where he stands wide-eyed watching the circle of power created for him. See Laura as she runs to him, runs from the darkness with all the grace of the wolf in her legs and her face. He watches, waits, hopes, wants so terribly and for the first time since he asked if this could be done, he’s _afraid_. He’s so afraid. He can see them coming even as his power drains out of him, leaving him weak on his knees and panting for breath. They’re so close, but he has so little left, and what if they don’t make it? What if he does all of this and loses them again? He’s so weak, and they needed more from him, _they always needed_ -

 

“Whoa, there, hey -” a soft voice says, pushing through the cotton in his head. “Guys? He’s waking up…”

Derek flexes his fingers, body radiating the quiet ache of having gone too far, too fast. It’s a pain he knows well, one he’s accustomed himself to in his life of progressively worse pains. He tries to sit up, but three separate hands stop him, two on his chest and one on his shoulder, holding him down to the soft nest he’s wrapped up in.

“Did it -?” his voice is a harsh croak, but he has to know, needs to be sure before he can claw his way back out of the liminal space. If they aren’t here, he doesn’t want to escape.

“It worked,” she says, and her voice is like music in his ears, soft and husky and perfect even though it’s weak.

_Laura_.

“You did it,” Cora tells him, and he can smell her, smell the lingering traces of salt on her skin, sweat or tears or both. She lays down with him, head resting in the crook of his shoulder. He wants to sit up, to wrap them both up in his arms and bring them close to his heart, but his muscles protest even the faintest motion, so he lets Cora pet at his arm instead.

His head is lifted gently and then it’s in someone’s lap, and the sweet, soft scent of pack - of _his_ pack, not the Beacon Hills pack, but the Hale pack, his family and his home - surrounds him. Laura’s fingers scratch idly at his scalp, sending trills of pleasure through him, easing the tension from his neck and shoulders.

Cora shifts against him and then there’s someone on his other side too: Erica and Boyd both press up close, snuggling in near his ribs. He opens his eyes just barely, but he doesn’t have to see them to feel them, to feel the way their hearts beat with his blood in them.

“I can’t believe you found us,” Boyd says, and he does sound disbelieving, like maybe he still doesn’t know the way that Derek loves him, loves all of them, deep in places that are overgrown with trees.

“I had to try,” Derek grits out, before Erica shushes him with one finger over his lips. Her hands look strange without their armor of red nail polish, softer and younger than they had when he carried her body away from the vault. She had looked young then, too, but life and death and life again has lent her an air of innocence she rejected before.

“Don’t talk,” she says, and smiles without her trademark smirk. “You’ll probably ruin it.”

His chest burns through the laugh, but it’s worth it to hear Cora snort, to feel Boyd’s rumbling chuckle through his skin and see the flash of glee in Erica’s eyes.

“Hey, there is no way that you guys started making fun of Derek without me, is there?” Isaac asks, flopping down next to Cora in a sprawl of limbs that barely makes sense. “Listen, I’ve been saving up zingers for years now. Do you even know how many werewolf jokes hunters have? My quiver is completely full.”

Cora cuffs him in the shoulder on Derek’s behalf, but there’s no animosity there. They wrestle a moment, playful, until Scott and Stiles join in, too, and then it’s a mad rush of pack members crowding around him with warm breath and soft hands, petting gently at skin that has ached with the want to belong to them. They form of a web of arms and legs, heads on chests and stomachs and thighs, until the entire pack is there and the only sound is the soft snuffled breaths of wolves and foxes, humans and… not exactly humans, but close. And at the center of it, Derek, covered by their protective arms. Sunlight breaks dimly through a window to his left like the promise of a new beginning, something that isn’t defined by violence or pain, by the ashes in his mouth or the stretch of unseen scars.

A new start for him.

“You did a good thing, Der,” Laura says in barely a whisper, and he feels it to his bones, the warm joy of having her back, of being safe within her hold.

A new start for them all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Your feedback is valuable to all fic writers, and I'm no exception. If you enjoyed this story, please let me know.
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://quicklikelight.tumblr.com).


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